Road traffic accidents and injuries, 2018: a multi-centric epidemiological study from India

Objective: Road traffic injuries (RTIs) have been recognized globally as an important public health problem. Effective road safety initiatives should address the traffic system as a whole to find a solution and look at the traffic system as a collective to discuss interactions between vehicles, road users and road infrastructure. Therefore, epidemiological data from different geographies of the country should be available. Hence, an electronic-based comprehensive and integrated RTI surveillance system was established in five centres located across the country to assess the burden of RTIs, including the outcome. Methods: This paper is a cross-sectional multi-centric study conducted using an electronic-based comprehensive and integrated RTI surveillance system. Results: A total of 15,319 participants were enrolled under the surveillance of road traffic events for a period of one year. Self-fall/skid was the most common (34.87%) type of accident, followed by a crash between two vehicles (25.77%) and a crash with a pedestrian (16.59%). Among them, 88.94% were the injured, who were alive with or without rehabilitation, and 673 (4.43%) were dead. Mostly, two-wheelers (geared or non-geared) were involved in the accident as they shared a significant portion (75.54%) of the total accidents. Conclusion: The study highlights the epidemiological issues related to road accidents and RTIs that need to be addressed in order to find appropriate solutions for reducing the RTI burden. It gives an understanding of the manner of trauma, the pattern of injuries, and the outcome of road traffic accidents required to adopt efficient preventive and comprehensive trauma care.